One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began,though the voices around youkept shoutingtheir bad advice–though the whole housebegan to trembleand you felt the old tugat your ankles.“Mend my life!”each voice cried.But you didn’t stop.You knew what you had to do,though the wind priedwith its stiff fingersat the very foundations,though their melancholywas terrible.It was already lateenough, and a wild night,and the road full of fallenbranches and stones.But little by little,as you left their voices behind,the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own,that kept you companyas you strode deeper and deeperinto the world,determined to dothe only thing you could do–determined to savethe only life you could save.

"Most people live in almost total darkness… people, millions of people whom you will never see, who don’t know you, never will know you, people who may try to kill you in the morning, live in a darkness which— if you have that funny terrible thing which every artist can recognize and no artist can define --you are responsible to those people to lighten, and it does not matter what happens to you.You are being used in the way a crab is useful, the way sand certainly has some function.It is impersonal.This force which you didn’t ask for, and this destiny which you must accept, is also your responsibility.And if you survive it, if you don’t cheat, if you don’t lie, it is not only, you know, your glory, your achievement, it is almost our only hope — because only an artist can tell, and only artists have told since we have heard of man, what it is like for anyone who gets to this planet to survive it. What it is like to die, or to have somebody die; what it is like to be glad.Hymns don’t do this, churches really cannot do it.The trouble is that although the artist can do it, the price that he has to pay himself and that you, the audience, must also pay, is a willingness to give up everything, to realize that although you spent twenty-seven years acquiring this house, this furniture, this position, although you spent forty years raising this child, these children, nothing, none of it belongs to you.You can only have it by letting it go.You can only take if you are prepared to give, and giving is not an investment.It is not a day at the bargain counter.It is a total risk of everything, of you and who you think you are, who you think you’d like to be, where you think you’d like to go — everything, and this forever, forever."

Trying to recall the plotAnd characters we dreamed, What life was likeBefore the morning came,We are seldom satisfied, And even thenThere is no way of knowingIf what we know is true. Something namelessHums us into sleep,Withdraws, and leaves us in A place that seemsAlways vaguely familiar.Perhaps it is because We take the propsAnd fixtures of our daysWith us into the dark, Assuring ourselvesWe are still alive. And yetNothing here is certain; Landscapes mergeWith one another, housesAre never where they should be, Doors and windowsSometimes open outTo other doors and windows, Even the personWho seems most like ourselvesCannot be counted on, For there have beenToo many times when he,Like everything else, has done The unexpected.And as the night wears on,The dim allegory of ourselves Unfolds, and weFeel dreamed by someone else,A sleeping counterpart, Who gathers inThe darkness of his personShades of the real world. Nothing is clear;We are not ever sureIf the life we live there Belongs to us.Each night it is the same;Just when we’re on the verge Of catching on,A sense of our remotenessCloses in, and the world So lately seenGradually fades from sight.We wake to find the sleeper Is ourselvesAnd the dreamt-of is someone who didSomething we can’t quite put Our finger on,But which involved a lifeWe are always, we feel, About to discover.